Chapter III: The Class Struggle 46 (3)

Many of the young people of education, who have of late come into the socialist movement, have left--temporarily, at least--the Doll's House of conservatism; but they have brought with them many of the habits of thought, many of the conventions of their old doll's life. Some of them, doubtless, realizing that the Materialist Conception of History involves the Nihilism of Socialism, and thus calls on them to abandon their religious, metaphysical, and dualistic habits of thought, to cast aside their conventional class morality, to cease vaporing about that impossible monstrosity, "the Socialist State," attempt to cut the Gordian knot by denying the Materialist Conception of History, while clinging to their socialist ideal. They thus repeat in inverted form the curious feat in intellectual acrobatics performed by Professor Seligman, who believes in historical materialism, but rejects Socialism. "There is nothing in common," he asserts, "between the economic interpretation of history and the doctrine of socialism, except the accidental fact that the originator of both theories happened to be the same man." And a few pages further on he reiterates: "Socialism and 'historical materialism' are entirely independent-conceptions."[32]

To the educated socialists, who deny or mutilate the doctrine of historical materialism, the materialist socialist might well reply by asserting that these educated socialists are socialists only because of the artistic, intellectual, ethical, and spiritual changes they expect the economic revolution of socialism to produce. The fact that they, lovers of "the things of the spirit," are socialists proves that they believe, albeit unconsciously, in economic determinism.

But, although this personal argument might Well be deemed sufficient, it can readily be proven affirmatively that the whole theory of Modern Socialism rests upon the foundation of historical materialism. This clearly appears in the' admirable summary of the teachings of Marx that Gabriel Deville gives in the Preface to his epitome of Marx's "Capital."

"History, Marx has shown, is nothing but the history of class
conflicts. The division of society into classes, which made its
appearance with the social life of man, rests on economic
relations--maintained by force--which enable some to succeed in
shifting on to the shoulders of others the natural necessity of
labor.

"Material interests have always been the inciting motives of the
incessant struggles of the privileged classes, either with, each
other, or against the inferior classes at whose expense they live.
Man is dominated by the material conditions of life, and these
conditions, and therefore the mode of production, have determined
and will determine human customs, ethics, and institutions--social,
economic, political, juridical, etc.

"As soon as one part of society has monopolized the means of
production, the other part, upon whom the burden of labor falls, is
obliged to add to the labor-time necessary for its own support, a
certain surplus-labor-time, for which it receives no
equivalent,--time that is devoted to supporting and enriching the
possessors of the means of production. As an extractor of unpaid
labor, which, by means of the increasing surplus-value whose source
it is, accumulates every day, more and more, in the hands of the
proprietary class the instruments of its dominion, the capitalist
regime surpasses in power all the antecedent regimes founded on
compulsory labor.

"But to-day, the economic conditions begotten by this regime,
trammelled in their natural evolution by this very regime,
inexorably tend to break the capitalist mould which can no longer
contain them, and these destroying principles are the elements of
the new society.

"The historic mission of the class at present exploited, the
proletariat, which is being organized and disciplined by the very
mechanism of capitalist production, is to complete the work of
destruction begun by the development of social antagonisms. It
must, first of all, definitively wrest from its class adversaries
the political power--the command of the force devoted by them to
preserving intact their economic monopolies and privileges.

"Once in control of the political power, it will be able, by
proceeding to the socialization of the means of production through
the expropriation of the usurpers of the fruits of others' toil, to
suppress the present contradiction between collective production
and private capitalist appropriation, and to realize the
universalization of labor, and the abolition of classes."[33]

If the "educated and professional" socialists cannot break the chain of this logic, they find themselves, as Nora did, face to face with the necessity of making a choice. Behind them is the old doll's house life with its manifold conventions--once useful, but through economic evolution outgrown and thus become false and deadly--a life, easy enough mayhap, but wholly devoid of idealism; before them is the new life of freedom, of revolt against outworn beliefs and conventions--a life of great difficulty, mayhap, but a life cheered by a noble ideal--an ideal in whose realization the socialist materialists believe as fully, as passionately as the ancient Hebrews believed in the fulfilment of the Messianic prophecies.

Theirs is a hard case. Without ideals they cannot, in any worthy sense, live. The only possible ideal, that even the keen eyes of so shrewd an observer as Mr. Street can perceive, is the ideal of Socialism. But they cannot accept this ideal without abandoning much, I do not say that is dear to them, but much that by habit and tradition has become part and parcel of their intellectual being.

If they decide to go forward into the New, the old world of dolls' houses must become a strange land to them. In the difficulties and trials of the new life, they cannot send back for aid to the old world, which will have become a world of strangers to them. Nora's woman's instinct did not fail her here; when Torvald asked if he could send help to her in case of need, her unhesitating reply was, "No, I say. I take nothing from strangers."

Far better is the case of the workingman attracted by the socialist ideal. The Nihilism of Socialism has no deterrent terrors for him, for, as Karl Marx said long ago, "he has nothing to lose but his chains, and a whole world to gain." He has long since lost all interest in religion; the factory by enlisting his wife and children as workers has already destroyed his home; and to him the State means nothing but the club of the policeman, the injunction of the judge, and the rifle of the militiaman.

But for the man of the "educated and professional classes" leaving the doll's house is indeed a difficult task. For its performance three things are requisite: a free and open mind, courage, and a vivid imagination. The Russian genius, Peshkoff (Maxim Gorky), did it, and did it with relative ease because he was a workingman _before_ he became an educated man. For the same reason, though in a less degree, Jack London has also done it successfully, though here and there he still lapses into the doll's mode of thought. The sex-interest in the latter part of "The Sea Wolf" is obviously treated from the dolls' point of view; but it should be remembered that Mr. London necessarily expected the majority of the purchasers of "The Sea Wolf" to be dolls. But, in spite of this instance, we may be sure that Jack London brought but little with him when he left the Doll's House; and I am very sure he never sends back to have parcels forwarded to him.

When Mr. Upton Sinclair left the Doll's House, he evidently stuffed his mental pockets with a large assortment of intellectual _lingerie_ and millinery from the doll wardrobes. In telling us what Life means to him in a recent magazine, he says that during a certain stress and storm period of his life he lived in close intimacy with three friends who "loved" him "very dearly." "Their names are Jesus, Hamlet and Shelley." Can any one imagine William Morris writing a sentiment so perfectly satisfying to a doll's sense of beauty? When I read these lines there rises before me a picture of the author tastefully robed in an exquisite dress--a doll's dress--of dotted swiss.[34]

Recently he has started a Co-operative Home Colony quite in the spirit of the bourgeois Utopians who founded Brook Farm more than half-a-century ago. Colony-founding, historians tell us, was a favorite amusement of the dolls of that era.

In the "Times Magazine" (for December 1906) he tells us that "the home has endured for ages, and through all the ages it has stayed about the same." This belief, I am informed, is almost universal among dolls.

I find myself the prey of a growing suspicion that Mr. Sinclair from time to time receives express parcels from the "Doll's House."

William Morris was a genius; he had a free and open mind; he had courage; and he had a vivid imagination. When he left the Doll's House, he took nothing with him, and he never afterward took anything "from strangers." It was his poet's imagination that enabled him to write "News from Nowhere," the only Utopia in whose communal halls the unwary reader does not stumble over dolls' furniture. Morris is the perfect type of the man of culture turned revolutionist.[35]

Mr. H. G. Wells has recently written a Utopian romance, "In the Days of the Comet," which, although it possesses in the fullest measure Mr. Wells' well known charm of style, is in substance at best a very feeble echo of "News from Nowhere." One of the modes of thought specially characteristic of eighteenth century French dolls is strongly to the fore in Mr. Wells' treatment of war. In the conversations "after the Change" between Melmount, the famous Cabinet Minister, and the pitiful, cowardly, inefficient hero (?), Leadford, they both appear to be inexpressibly shocked at the _unreasonableness_ of war. It is true it is somewhat difficult to tell just what Melmount did think or feel, for Melmount is in one particular like Boston's distinguished _litterateur_, Mr. Lawson,--he appears to be constantly on the point of uttering some great thought, but never utters it. But so far as light is given us Melmount after the Change seems to have looked on war much as Carlyle did long before. Every one remembers Carlyle's two groups of peasants,[36] living hundreds of miles apart, who never heard of each other, and had not the slightest quarrel, the one with the other, but who none-the-less obeyed the orders of their respective kings, and marched until they met, and at the word of command shot each other into corpses. Most of us will agree with Carlyle and Melmount that, viewed from the peasants' standpoint, this was unreasonable to the point of sheer folly.

But, if I understand Mr. Wells aright, he seems to elevate the reason of the peasant into something very like the "eternal reason" of Diderot and Rousseau. He apparently forgets for the nonce that Engels long ago pointed out that "this eternal reason was in reality nothing but the idealized understanding of the eighteenth century citizen, just then evolving into the bourgeois." The difficulty that Mr. Wells will encounter in trying to bring human society into harmony with "eternal reason" is the impossibility of getting different classes of men to agree as to what is reasonable. No one outside of dolls' houses any longer believes in "eternal reason." Every man and every class has an ideal of what is reasonable, but these ideals vary. War is unreasonable to the peasant-target; it is also unreasonable to Melmount and Mr. Wells so far as they are representatives of the citizens of the classless society of the future, a society based on social solidarity, on world-wide brotherhood. But to the socialist materialist, war, in a world based on private ownership of the means of production used to produce commodities, with its concomitants, the wage-system, competition--domestic and international,--and ever-recurring "over-production," is so very far from unreasonable that it is absolutely inevitable.[37]

Mr. Wells evidently brought something with him when he left the Doll's House.

We now begin to realize what a very difficult matter it is to rid the mind completely of the effects of what Professor Veblen calls "the institutional furniture handed down from the past." The man, who yields to the lure of Socialism, must sooner or later effect a revolution within his own mind; if he does not, he will sooner or later return to his Doll's House, or make an excursion into some field of "pragmatic romance" where he will build himself a new doll's house.

Granted the truth of historical materialism, how will future generations look on the literature of to-day and yesterday? To a generation wholly untrained in theological, metaphysical and dualistic modes of thought how much meaning will there be in the poetry of Tennyson and Browning? For my part, I never read Browning now without being unpleasantly reminded of the aphorism Nietzsche put into the mouth of Zarathustra: "Alas, it is true I have cast my net in their (poets') seas and tried to catch good fish; but I always drew up the head of some old God."

But I am glad to believe that the matchless melody and the chiseled beauty of Tennyson's verse will charm the senses of men to whom his curious mixture of pantheism and Broad Church theology, which the middle classes of England and America in the latter decades of the nineteenth century welcomed as the ultimate massage of philosophy, will not be ridiculous only because it will be meaningless. But I am unable to think of the men of the future deriving any pleasure from our greatest poet, Browning. On the other hand it is not impossible that the fame of Swinburne will stand higher in the twenty-first century than it does in this opening decade of the twentieth.

The men and women of the future will, I am sure, feel themselves akin to Shelley. They will probably enjoy Byron too, so far as they understand him; but men and women, who have never known any relationship between the sexes but that of independence and equality, will be bored and baffled by that great bulk of Byron's verse which shocked his contemporaries.

When we turn to the drama, it appears probable that the revolution in the relations of the sexes will convert into mere materials for the historian even our greatest plays, such as Ibsen's "The Doll's House," Sudermann's "The Joy of Living," Maeterlinck's "Monna Vanna," and Shaw's "Mrs. Warren's Profession."

Are the "educated and professional" socialists prepared to accept gladly such tremendous changes? They are confronted by a momentous question. It was of their class William Morris was thinking when he wrote:

"I have looked at this claim by the light of history and my own
conscience, and it seems to me so looked at to be a most just
claim, and that resistance to it means nothing short of a denial of
the hope of civilization.

This, then, is the claim:--

_It is right and necessary that all men should have work to do
which shall be worth doing, and be of itself pleasant to do: and
which should be done under such conditions as would make it neither
over-wearisome nor over-anxious._

Turn that claim about as I may, think of it as long as I can, I
cannot find that it is an exorbitant claim; yet again I say if
Society would or could admit it, the face of the world would be
changed; discontent and strife and dishonesty would be ended. To
feel that we were doing work useful to others and pleasant to
ourselves, and that such work and its due reward _could_ not fail
us! What serious harm could happen to us then? And the price to be
paid for so making the world happy is Revolution."[38]

Are they willing to pay the price? Nora paid the price for her freedom and paid it in full.

_She took nothing from strangers._

If they are unwilling to pay the price, what is there left for them save the joyless sensuality and black despair of pessimism?

FOOTNOTES:

[7] "The Theory of Business Enterprise," Veblen, New York, 1904. Pages 351, 352. See also my article on Veblen the Revolutionist, International Socialist Review, June, 1905, vol. V, page 726.

[8] Throughout this article "nihilism" is not used in its strict technical or philosophical sense, but is used simply as a convenient term by which to designate the aggregate of those aspects of Socialism which, viewed from the standpoint of the existing regime, appear as negative and destructive.

[9] "A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy." Karl Marx, New York, 1904. Pages 11, 12.

[10] "See Philosophical Essays," Joseph Dietzgen, Chicago, 1906. Pages 174 and 52.

[11] "Essays on the Materialistic Conception of History." Antonio Labriola, Chicago, 1904. Pages 85, 86.

[12] l. c. pages 155-6, 158.

[13] "Philosophical Essays." Dietzgen. Page 86.

[14] "Socialism and Modern Science." Enrico Ferri, New York, 1904. Pages 60, 61.

[15] "Philosophical Essays." Dietzgen. Page 116.

[16] The reader will observe that Ferri reads into the Erfurt pronouncement on religion (quoted in full above) a broader spirit of tolerance than its words necessarily imply.

[17] See "The Theory of the Leisure Class." Thorstein Veblen, New York, 1905. Pages 287, 288.

[18] Marx in "Zur Kritik der Hegelschen Rechts Philosophie."

[19] "The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State." F. Engels, Chicago, 1905. Page 99, and "Woman under Socialism," August Bebel, New York, 1904. Page 127.

[20] Engels, "Origin of the Family, &c." Page 100.

[21] (Mrs. Parsons'.) The enlightened public opinion of to-day finds the chief if not the only warrant for universal male suffrage in its being an educational means. In this view women need the suffrage at present even more than men.

[22] (Mrs. Parsons'.) Dr. Alice Drysdale Vickery gave striking expression to one phase of this subject at a recent discussion of the London Sociological Society. She urged that _without economic independence_ the individuality of woman could not exercise that natural selective power in the choice of a mate which was probably a main factor in the spiritual evolution of the race. _The American Journal of Sociology_, Sept., 1905. Page 279.

[23] (LaMonte's.) No wonder such a startling hypothesis aroused the ire of our clerical friends.

[24] (LaMonte's.) It is worthy of note that this suggestion of a serious modification of marriage _under existing economic conditions_ comes characteristically, not from a Socialist, but from the wife of a Republican member of Congress and the daughter of a distinguished financier.

[25] (Mrs. Parsons'.) Through the discovery of certain and innocuous methods of preventing conception. The application of this knowledge would have to be encouraged by public opinion in cases where conception would result in a degenerate offspring. Public opinion would also have to endorse the segregation of persons tainted with communicable sexual disease.

[26] Berlin cablegram in the New York Sun of Dec. 7, 1906.

[27] "Origin of the Family, &c.," Pages 91, 92. See also Bebel, "Woman under Socialism," Page 122, and elsewhere.

[28] "Origin of the Family &c." Pages 208, 209.

[29] On the existence of organized societies without a co-ercive State, see also, "Ancient Society." Lewis H. Morgan, Chicago, 1907.

[30] "Origin of the Family &c." Pages 211, 212.

[31] "Socialism: Utopian and Scientific." F. Engels, Chicago, 1905. Pages 76, 77.

[32] "The Economic Interpretation of History." Edwin R. A. Seligman, New York, 1903. Pages 105 and 109.

[33] "The People's Marx." Gabriel Deville, New York, 1900. Pages 18, 19.

[34] Cartoonists are warned that this idea is protected by copyright.

[35] The other day I chanced upon a pamphlet by one Oscar Lovell Triggs of Chicago. It bore the title, "William Morris, Craftsman, Writer and Social Reformer." In turning over its pages I was somewhat startled to read: "'Scientific' socialism he never understood or advocated." And again further on my eye fell on this gem: "It is apparent that Morris's 'Socialism' is poetic and not scientific socialism." This pamphlet should have a place of honor in every doll's library.

[36] In "Sartor Resartus."

[37] In fact, Professor Veblen has shown that for the last quarter of a century the commonest cause of seasons of "ordinary prosperity" has been war. See "The Theory of Business Enterprise." Pages 250-1.

[38] From "Art and Socialism," a pamphlet that is now rare.

THE BIOGENETIC LAW

It is very easy to go too far in drawing analogies between biology and sociology. Society--as yet, at least--is not an organism in the sense that a tree or a mammal is. It is quite true that with the perfect organization and solidarity to which Socialists look forward the analogy will be more complete than it is to-day, but for the present we must always remember that, as the lawyers would say, "the cases are not on all fours." If we bear these reservations in mind laws drawn from natural science are often of the greatest aid in enabling us to understand the phenomena of psychology and sociology.

One of the most helpful of these laws of science is the biogenetic law which is always associated with the great name of Ernest Haeckel, its most distinguished exponent. Doctor William Boelsche, in his book[39] on Haeckel, uses, to illustrate this law, the familiar example of the frog. The mother frog lays her eggs in the water. In due course a new little frog develops from each of these eggs. But the object that develops from them is altogether different from the adult frog. This object is the familiar fish-like tadpole. It finally loses its tail, develops legs, and becomes a frog. Doctor Boelsche discusses the matter as follows:--

"There are reasons on every hand for believing that the frogs and salamanders, which now stand higher in classification than the fishes, were developed from the fishes in earlier ages in the course of progressive evolution. Once upon a time they were fishes. If that is so, the curious phenomenon we have been considering really means that each young frog resembles its fish ancestors. In each case to-day the frog's egg first produces the earlier or ancestral stage, the fish, it then develops rapidly into a frog. In other words, the individual development recapitulates an important chapter of the earlier history of the whole race of frogs. Putting this in the form of a law, it runs: each new individual must, in its development, pass rapidly through the form of its parents' ancestors before it assumes the parent form itself. If a new individual frog is to be developed and if the ancestors of the whole frog stem were fishes, the first thing to develop from the frog's egg will be a fish and it will only later assume the form of a frog.

"That is a simple and pictorial outline of what we mean when we speak of the biogenetic law. We need, of course, much more than the one frog-fish before we can erect it into a law. But we have only to look around us and we find similar phenomena as common as pebbles.

"Let us bear in mind that evolution proceeded from certain amphibia to the lizards and from these to the birds and mammals. That is a long journey, but we have no alternative. If the amphibia (such as the frog and the salamander) descend from the fishes, all the higher classes up to man himself must also have done so. Hence the law must have transmitted even to ourselves this ancestral form of the gill-breathing fish.

"What a mad idea, many will say, that man should at one time be a tadpole like the frog! And yet--there's no help in prayer, as Falstaff said--even the human germ or embryo passes through a stage at which it shows the outlines of gills on the throat just like a fish. It is the same with the dog, the horse, the kangaroo, the duck mole, the bird, the crocodile, the turtle, the lizard. They all have the same structure.

"Nor is this an isolated fact. From the fish was evolved the amphibian. From this came the lizard. From the lizard came the bird. The lizard has solid teeth in its mouth. The bird has no teeth in its beak. That is to say, it has none to-day. But it had when it was a lizard. Here, then we have an intermediate stage between the fish and the bird. We must expect that the bird embryo in the egg will show some trace of it. As a matter of fact, it does so. When we examine young parrots in the egg we find that they have teeth in their mouth before the bill is formed. When the fact was first discovered, the real intermediate form between the lizard and the bird was not known. It was afterwards discovered at Solenhofen in a fossil impression from the Jurassic period. This was the archeopteryx, which had feathers like a real bird and yet had teeth in its mouth like the lizard when it lived on earth. The instance is instructive in two ways. In the first place it shows that we were quite justified in drawing our conclusions as to the past from the bird's embryonic form, even if the true transitional form between the lizard and the bird were never discovered at all. In the second place, we see in the young bird in the egg the reproduction of two consecutive ancestral stages: one in the fish gills, the other in the lizard-like teeth. Once the law is admitted, there can be nothing strange in this. If one ancestral stage, that of the fish, is reproduced in the young animal belonging to a higher group, why not several?--why not all of them? No doubt, the ancestral series of the higher forms is of enormous length. What an immense number of stages there must have been before the fish! And then we have still the amphibian, the lizard, and the bird or mammal, up to man.

"Why should not the law run: the whole ancestral series must be reproduced in the development of each individual organism? We are now in a position to see the whole bearing of Haeckel's idea."

In analogy with this, is it not true that every thinking man and woman in the course of his or her development, epitomizes the history of human thought? To be more specific, I take it that you, reader, are an educated man of middle-class origin, and that you have been a socialist for at least six months, and have, of course, read Engels' "Socialism: Utopian and Scientific." Now, is it not a fact that your socialism has developed from Utopia toward Science exactly along the lines Engels has traced for the movement at large? So true was this in my case that for a long time I was inclined to push the biogenetic law too far and to conclude that every socialist had traveled the same road. I still think the law holds here, but not in the narrow way I first applied it.

In the course of my work as an agitator (and socialist agitation is the best School of Socialism) I met many sterling socialists who had never been Utopians as I had. They were born fighters, so to speak, and had been full of the class spirit, and fighting the capitalists in the trade-union and elsewhere in every way they could think of, long before they had ever heard of the ideal of the Co-operative Commonwealth. And these men are among our best and most uncompromising socialists. Here was a hard problem for me. I believed in my law, but it did not seen to cover the cases of these militant socialists. I was long in solving the problem, but I solved it at last.

Socialism has two aspects. As the most vital fact of modern life it is a kinetic force. "Modern Socialism" in Engels' words "is, in its essence, the direct product of the recognition on the one hand, of the class antagonisms, existing in the society of to-day, between proprietors and non-proprietors, between capitalists and wage-workers; on the other hand, of the anarchy existing in production." This is Socialism, the most pregnant actuality in the palpitating life all about us. But, as Engels pointed out, Socialism also has its ideological side. In this sense it may correctly be called a theory, if we bear in mind that it is the virile force of class-feeling, and not the theory, that is going to effect the Social Revolution. Now, every individual socialist does in his development conform to the biogenetic law; but the bourgeois socialist is more apt to epitomize the history of Socialist theory, while the proletarian socialist recapitulates the development of class feeling as a kinetic force from blind and often unavailing hatred of the rich to the fruitful class-consciousness of the Marxian Socialist. The individual may combine these two processes in varying proportions; but in broad outline the bourgeois may be expected to reproduce fairly closely the history of Socialism, as a theory, while the proletarian reproduces the history of Socialism, the great kinetic force.

While, from the standpoint of socialist theory, the statement of Doctor Parkhurst and many others that "Christ was a Socialist" is a manifest absurdity, the historian who traces back the history of Socialism, the kinetic force, will surely be led by the chain of facts to James and Jesus and Isaiah. For they were among those who gave most effective expression to the class hatred which is the lineal ancestor of Marxian Socialism viewed as a kinetic actuality. In this sense Jesus was one of the founders of Socialism.

Here are a few extracts from these ancient sowers of the seeds of discontent:

"The Lord will enter into judgment with the ancients of his people,
and the princes thereof: for ye have eaten up the vineyard; the
spoil of the poor is in your houses.

What mean ye that ye beat my people to pieces, and grind the faces
of the poor? saith the Lord God of hosts."

"Wo unto them that join house to house, that lay field to field,
till there be no place, that they may be placed alone in the midst
of the earth!" ISAIAH.

"Verily I say unto you, That a rich man shall hardly enter the
kingdom of heaven.

And again I say unto you, It is easier for a camel to go through
the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom
of God."

"Wo unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye devour
widows' houses, and for a pretense make long prayer: therefore ye
shall receive the greater damnation." JESUS.

"Go to now, ye rich men, weep and howl for your miseries that shall
come upon you.

Your riches are corrupted, and your garments are moth-eaten.

Your gold and silver is cankered; and the rust of them shall be a
witness against you, and shall eat your flesh as it were fire. Ye
have heaped treasure together for the last days.

Behold, the hire of the labourers who have reaped down your fields,
which is of you kept back by fraud, crieth; and the cries of them
which have reaped are entered into the ears of the Lord of
Sabaoth."
JAMES.

James would appear to have been somewhat more class-conscious than is deemed decorous by most of our modern Christian Socialists. But Isaiah and Jesus and James all give expression to precisely the same fierce emotions that I have many a time seen blazing out of the eyes of poor hopeless proletarians grouped around the soap-box; and it is the glory of Modern Socialism that it has been able to transform this fierce class hatred into intelligent class-consciousness which aims by loyalty to the Proletariat to rescue the rich as well as the poor from the fatal curse of economic inequality.

The bourgeois and the proletarian who come into the Socialist movement both have tadpole tails to lose in the course of their development into scientific socialists; but the tails are different. The proletarian has to rid himself of his hatred of the rich as individuals. He has to learn that Rockefeller, just as much as he himself, is a product of economic conditions. After he once thoroughly learns this there will be no danger of his being a Democrat or Anarchist or any other species of dangerous reactionary. The bourgeois tail is harder to lose. It consists of animistic, theological and dualistic habits of thought, issuing in utopianism and non-materialistic idealism. For, if I may be permitted to toy with the Hegelian dialectic in the manner of Marx, no man can be a fruitful idealist until he has become a materialist.

The reader of this volume will probably find himself able to agree pretty fully with what I have said in "Science and Socialism." That is because, when I wrote that, I had not fully gotten rid of my idealistic tadpole tail. He will probably have more difficulty in assenting to the theses of "The Nihilism of Socialism." That is because he has not yet gotten rid of his tadpole tail. I do not wish to be understood as speaking with contempt or depreciation of the tadpole tails. Without their aid most of us bourgeois socialist frogs would never have been able to get out of our old conservative shells. It was the utopianism of our tails, in most cases, that first cracked the shell.

I should be sorry to have any reader interpret the materialism of "The Nihilism of Socialism" into a disposition to deny or depreciate the great and beneficent influence that Christianity has had in the past. I should be greatly chagrined to be accused of irreverence in discussing religion. Irreverence is ever a sign of a narrow intellectual horizon and a limited vision. The scoffer is the product of the limited knowledge characteristic of what Engels called "metaphysical materialism." Unfortunately the mental development of many in the past has been arrested at this Ingersoll-Voltaire stage. But with the growth of Modern Socialism the tendency is for the metaphysical materialist to _grow_ into socialist or dialectic materialism with its Hegelian watchword, "Nothing is; every thing is becoming."

The socialist materialist realizes that the obsolescent ideals of Christianity and the Family have played leading roles in the great drama of human progress. It is impossible for him to speak lightly or contemptuously of the ideals which have sustained and comforted, guided and cheered countless hosts of his fellows through the long, dark ages of Christian Faith. But he knows that those ages are past and that present day adherence to the old ideals is atavistic and reactionary. But none-the-less his mental attitude toward the old ideals is one of reverent sympathy and, I had almost added, gratitude. This state of feeling has found perfect expression in these lines by William Morris:

"They are gone--the lovely, the mighty, the hope of the ancient
Earth:
It shall labor and bear the burden as before that day of their
birth;
It shall groan in its blind abiding for the day that Sigurd hath
sped,
And the hour that Brynhild hath hastened, and the dawn that waketh
the dead;
It shall yearn, and be oft-times holpen, and forget their deeds no
more,
Till the new sun beams on Baldur, and the happy sea-less shore."
(From SIGURD the VOLSUNG.)

FOOTNOTE:

[39] Haeckel: His Life and Work. By William Boelsche. George W. Jacobs & Company.

KISMET.

"Verily I say unto you. That there be some of them that stand here
which shall not taste of death, till they have seen the kingdom of
God come with power." Mark, ix, 1.

The very close analogy between primitive Christianity and Modern Socialism has often been pointed out both by materialists, such as Enrico Ferri, and by Churchmen, such as the Reverend Doctor Hall.

We find in both the doctrine of the Advent. The primitive Christian believed in all simplicity and sincerity that he should not taste death until the Son of Man had come and established upon earth His kingdom of justice, peace and brotherhood. The Marxian Socialist to-day is even more sure that men and women now living will bear a part in the Social Revolution which is to usher in the reign of Fellowship on earth. The secret of the propaganda power of both movements is in the sincerity of this conviction.

Just at this point we are often met with two queries, both of which bear witness to the persistence of the utopian tadpole tails of the questioners. The first question is: If the early Christians were sincere and yet mistaken, may not the Socialists also be mistaken in their doctrine of the inevitability of Socialism? The second question is: If Socialism is inevitable--is coming anyhow--why do you Socialists vex your souls agitating for it?

The doubt of the inevitability of Socialism on analysis is always found to be a doubt of the pro-socialist desires and actions of the Proletariat. No one disputes that the Capitalist system is breaking down. With the great mass of the producers receiving bare subsistence wages the impossibility of disposing of the almost miraculously stupendous product of modern machines and processes is mathematically demonstrable. The former paradox of the Socialist agitator, that the Utopian is the man who believes in the possibility of the continuance of the present system, has become a platitude. Nor can many be found to dispute the statement that the centralization of industry in the United States has reached a point where Socialism is economically entirely practicable. The doubt of the sceptics is: Will the workers create, in the language of economics, an effective demand for Socialism? Two eminent Utopians have voiced this doubt in the recent past. Their names are George D. Herron and Daniel DeLeon. Both alike forget that the desires, ideals, and motives of the proletariat cannot but be in harmony with their economic environment, and I do not think that either of them would deny that, as we near the downfall of Capitalism, the economic environment will more and more imperatively drive men to Socialism as the only avenue of escape from chaos and pessimism. On this point, of the motives to action of the individual being formed by economic conditions, Marx wrote in "The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte": "On the various forms of property, on the conditions of social existence, there rises an entire superstructure of various and peculiarly formed sensations, illusions, methods of thought and views of life. The whole class fashions and moulds them from out of their material foundations and their corresponding social relations. The single individual, in whom they converge through tradition and education, is apt to imagine that they constitute the real determining causes and the point of departure of his action." (Prof. Seligman's translation.)

The man who has thoroughly assimilated the doctrine of historical materialism cannot for a moment doubt the inevitability of Socialism. The utopianism which evinces itself in this doubt may be depended upon to betray itself elsewhere in the views of the doubters. We find that this is signally true in the case of the two illustrious utopian sceptics I have mentioned. The Natural Rights platform that Professor Herron wrote and the Socialist Party adopted in 1904 is only less utopian than Daniel DeLeon's curiously childish conceit that in the highly factitious, "wheel of fortune" form of organization of the Industrial Workers of the World[40] we have the precise frame-work of the coming Co-operative Commonwealth.

It does not seem too much to say that doubt of the inevitability of Socialism is in all cases a symptom of failure to apprehend clearly the full implications of the Materialist Conception of History.

The second question, If Socialism is inevitable, why do Socialists work to bring it about?, would appear to have been answered by implication in the course of our discussion of the first question. In brief, we work for it because we know that if we did not it would never come. It is inevitable simply because Socialists are inevitable. Our activity as Socialist agitators is a necessary result of the development of capitalist industry just as much as the Trust is. Again, we work for Socialism because we know we can get it, and we work all the harder if we believe it is coming soon. One of the most active of our wealthy socialists has said: "If I had to be in 'the hundred year, step at a time, take-what-you-can-get' class, you would find me automobiling my life away down at Newport with Reggie Vanderbilt instead of editing this magazine.... As said, I would rather chase down the pike on my Red Dragon at 'steen hundred miles an hour, terrifying the farmers, than go in for any 'reform game'." (Gaylord Wilshire in Wilshire Editorials. New York, 1907. Pages 232, 233.) So we find that in practice the belief in the inevitability and the proximity of Socialism is the most powerful stimulus to socialist activity.

We believe that the doctrine of the inevitability of Socialism is scientifically true, that its proclamation is the most effective weapon in the arsenal of the Socialist agitator, and that it is the most powerful incentive to Socialist activity; so that we mean exactly what the words imply when we address our non-socialist friends in the words of William Morris:

_"Come, join in the only battle wherein no man can fail,
Where whoso fadeth and dieth, yet his deed shall still prevail."_

FOOTNOTE:

[40] I trust that no one will construe this as an attack on the Industrial Workers of the World. It is not my intention to express in this place any opinion as to the merits or demerits of that organization. It is only mentioned here because mention of it was necessary to illustrate the most curious case I know of the abnormally prolonged retention of the utopian tadpole tail.

ADVERTISEMENTS

Books on Socialism, Modern Science, etc.

STANDARD SOCIALIST SERIES.

This series of books, the first volumes of which were issued in 1901, contains some of the most important works by the ablest Socialist writers of Europe and America. The size of page is 63/4 by 41/4 inches, making a convenient shape either for the pocket or the library shelf. The books are substantially bound in cloth, stamped with a uniform design, and are mechanically equal to many of the books sold by other publishers at a dollar a copy. Our retail price, postage included, is FIFTY CENTS.

1. +Karl Marx: Biographical Memoirs.+ By Wilhelm Liebknecht, translated by Ernest Untermann. Cloth, 50 cents.

This personal biography of Marx, by an intimate friend who was
himself one of the foremost Socialists of Germany, gives a new
insight into the beginnings of Socialism. Moreover, it is a
charming book, as interesting as a novel, and will make an
admirable introduction to heavier reading on Socialism.

2. +Collectivism and Industrial Evolution.+ By Emile Vandervelde, member of the Chamber of Deputies, Belgium. Translated by Charles H. Kerr. Cloth, 50 cents.

The author is a Socialist member of the Belgian Parliament and is
one of the ablest writers in the international Socialist movement.
This book is, on the whole, the most satisfactory brief summary of
the principles of Socialism that has yet been written. One
distinctive feature of it is that it takes up the difficult
questions of how the machinery of production could be acquired and
how wages could be adjusted under a Socialist administration.

3. +The American Farmer: An Economic and Historical Study.+ By A. M. Simons. Cloth, 50 cents.

"The American Farmer," in spite of its small size, is the largest
contribution yet given to the agrarian literature of this country.
The author, besides being a student of American social conditions,
is thoroughly conversant with practical farming, and there is
little doubt that the farmer who reads the work will have to admit
that the conclusions are based on a real understanding of the
difficulties of his struggle with the soil, with railroads, trusts
and foreign competitors.--Chicago Tribune.

4. +The Last Days of the Ruskin Co-operative Association.+ By Isaac Broome. Cloth, illustrated, 50 cents.

Socialism does not mean withdrawing from the class struggle and
trying to set up a paradise on a small scale. If there are those
who still think such a scheme practicable, they will find
interesting facts in this book.

5. +The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State.+ By Frederick Engels. Translated by Ernest Untermann. Cloth, 50 cents.

This is one of the most important of the author's works, and
although first published in 1884, was never accessible to English
readers until our translation appeared in 1902. It contains
practically everything necessary to the general reader in the
voluminous work of Morgan, and it furthermore gives many additional
facts and a coherent, scientific treatment of the whole subject.
The book is of great propaganda value, in that it shows the folly
of the popular idea that wealth and poverty always have existed and
so may always be expected to continue.

6. +The Social Revolution.+ By Karl Kautsky. Translated by A. M. and May Wood Simons. Cloth, 50 cents.

Kautsky is the editor of the Neue Zeit, and is universally
recognized as one of the ablest Socialist writers and thinkers in
Europe. This book is in two parts. Part I., Reform and Revolution,
explains the essential difference between the Socialist party and
all reform parties. Part II., The Day After the Revolution, gives
straightforward answers to the questions so often asked about what
the Socialists would do if entrusted with the powers of government.

7. +Socialism, Utopian and Scientific.+ By Frederick Engels. Translated by Edward Aveling, D.Sc., with a Special Introduction by the Author. Cloth, 50 cents.

This book ranks next to the Communist Manifesto as one of the best
short statements in any language of the fundamental principles of
Socialism. It is an essential part of every Socialist library,
however small.

8. +Feuerbach: The Roots of the Socialist Philosophy.+ By Frederick Engels. Translated, with Critical Introduction, by Austin Lewis. Cloth, 50 cents.

This book is a criticism on the works of a forgotten philosopher,
but it is still of timely interest, since attempts are still being
made to reintroduce dualist notions into the philosophy of
Socialism. Austin Lewis contributes an interesting historical
introduction.

9. +American Pauperism and the Abolition of Poverty.+ By Isador Ladoff, with a supplement, "Jesus or Mammon," by J. Felix. Cloth, 50 cents.

A study of the last United States census, bringing out in bold
relief the social contrasts that are purposely left obscure in the
official documents. An arsenal of facts for Socialist writers and
speakers.

10. +Britain for the British (America for the Americans.)+ By Robert Blatchford, with American Appendix by A. M. Simons. Cloth, 50 cents.

A popular presentation of Socialism, in the same charming and
simple style as the author's "Merrie England," but giving a far
more adequate and scientific account of the subject.

11. +Manifesto of the Communist Party.+ By Karl Marx and Frederick Engels. Authorized English Translation: Edited and Annotated by Frederick Engels. Also included in the same volume, +No Compromise: No Political Trading.+ By Wilhelm Liebknecht. Translated by A. M. Simons and Marcus Hitch. Cloth, 50 cents.

This manifesto, first published in 1848, is still recognized the
world over as the clearest statement of the principles of the
international Socialist party. It has been translated into the
language of every country where capitalism exists, and it is being
circulated more rapidly to-day than ever before.

12. +The Positive School of Criminology.+ By Enrico Ferri. Translated by Ernest Untermann. Cloth, 50 cents.

The science of criminology has been revolutionized within one
generation by the Socialist students of Italy, of whom Ferri is the
most prominent living representative. This book is indispensable to
any one desiring reliable information on the modern theory of crime
and its treatment.

13. +The World's Revolutions.+ By Ernest Untermann. Cloth, 50 cents.

A study of the economic causes of the great revolutions of the
world's history in the light of the Socialist principle of
historical materialism.

14. +The Socialists, Who They Are and What They Seek to Accomplish.+ By John Spargo. Cloth, 50 cents.

Scientific yet readable and easy; written in a style that the man
in the street will understand and the man in the university will
admire. Just the book to start a new reader.

15. +Social and Philosophical Studies.+ By Paul Lafargue. Translated by Charles H. Kerr. In Preparation.

This book will contain two studies entirely new to American
readers, "Causes of Belief in God," and "The Origin of Abstract
Ideas." It will also contain several studies reprinted from the
International Socialist Review. Lafargue's brilliant style makes
even the most abstract subjects delightful.

LIBRARY OF SCIENCE FOR THE WORKERS.

Modern International Socialism is directly related to modern science. It is in a sense the evolution theory applied to the facts of society. It, therefore, follows that for a full understanding of socialism some general knowledge of the facts of modern science is necessary.

A new series of books has lately appeared in Germany which give in simple and popular form complete proofs of the evolution theory along with a clear account of the latest applications of this theory in the various fields of modern science. We have arranged to translate and publish some of the best of these, along with such original works in the same line as are available. They are uniform in size with the Standard Socialist Series.

1. +The Evolution of Man.+ By Wilhelm Boelsche. Translated by Ernest Untermann. Cloth, 50 cents.

"The Evolution of Man" tells in full detail, in a clear, simple
style, illustrated by pictures, just how the descent of man can be
traced back through monkeys, marsupials, amphibians, fishes, worms
and lower forms of life, down to the animals composed each of a
single cell. Moreover, it proves that there is no such fixed line
as was formerly thought to exist between the organic and the
inorganic, but that the same life-force molds the crystal that
molds the cell. It is not only simple; it is up-to-date and gives
the latest discoveries in science. It is _the_ book on the subject.

2. +Germs of Mind in Plants.+ By R. H. France. Translated by A. M. Simons. Cloth, illustrated, 50 cents.

A cardinal point in the philosophical systems favored by the ruling
classes is that the mind of man is something unique in the
universe, governed by laws of its own that have no particular
connection with physical laws. Modern science has proved that not
only animals, but also plants, receive impressions from the outside
world and use the data thus obtained to modify their movements for
their own advantage, exactly as human beings do. These facts are
told in this book in so charming and entertaining a style that the
reader is carried along and does not realize until later the
revolutionary significance of the facts.

3. +The End of the World.+ By Dr. M. Wilhelm Meyer. Translated by Margaret Wagner. Cloth, illustrated, 50 cents.

This book answers in the light of the discovery of modern science
the questions frequently asked as to the probable end of human life
on this planet. Moreover, it goes a step further in making clear
the relations of man's life to the universe life. We have already
seen that "mind" is but another form of "life." Dr. Meyer shows
that not only animals and plants but even worlds and suns have
their birth, growth, maturity, reproduction, decay and death, and
that death is but the preparation for a new cycle of life.

4. +Science and Revolution: A Historical Study of the Evolution of the Theory of Evolution.+ By Ernest Untermann. Cloth, 50 cents.

A history of the evolution of the theory of evolution, from the
earliest scientific writings that have been preserved, those of the
Greek philosophers, down to the present time. The author shows how
the ruling classes, living on the labor of others, have always
supported some form of theology or mysticism, while the working
classes have developed the theory of evolution, which is rounded
out to its logical completion by the work of Marx, Engels and
Dietzgen. The author frankly recognizes that no writer can avoid
being influenced by his class environment, and he himself speaks
distinctly as a proletarian and a Socialist. "Science and
Revolution" is an essential link in the chain of evidence proving
that conclusions drawn by Socialists from the facts of science.

5. +The Triumph of Life.+ By Wilhelm Boelsche. Translated by May Wood Simons. Cloth, 50 cents.

The German critics agree that this book is even more interesting
than "The Evolution of Man," by the same author. It tells of the
struggle of life against its physical environment, and introduces a
wealth of scientific detail charming set forth. The German original
contains no illustrations, but our edition is fully illustrated
with pictures that aid materially in an understanding of the text.

6. +Life and Death, a Chapter from the Science of Life.+ By Dr. E. Teichmann. Translated by A. M. Simons. Cloth, 50 cents.

A study of how life begins and how it ends. It does not duplicate
any other book in this series, but is a special investigation into
the laws which govern the reproduction of life. It also deals with
the methods by which the life of each separate individual is
brought to an end, and shows that in an overwhelming majority of
cases throughout the whole animal kingdom death is violent rather
than "natural." Even among human beings a really "natural" death is
rare. The author suggests that with improved conditions of living,
most premature deaths may be prevented, and that in that event the
fear of death, which causes so much of the misery of the world, may
disappear.